


i’m sure we're taller (in another dimension)

by possibilist



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: 10 + 1 yall are so lucky & i cant pace anything, F/F, canon all the way until the +1 bc it hasnt actually happened yet but yknow have at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 15:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15609738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: ten times kat's heart breaks & one time it doesn't.





	i’m sure we're taller (in another dimension)

**Author's Note:**

> 1 wow ok this was going to be '10 times adena breaks kats heart & one time she doesn't' but honestly i think kat breaks her own heart like 7/10 times so lmao
> 
> 2 pls listen to white ferrari i have been losing my goddamn mind for the whole season over this fucking song i singlehandedly put blonde back on the billboard top 200 pray 4 me
> 
> 3 when will my children get to go to union pool

**i know we’re taller (in another dimension)**

 

.

 

_ you say we’re small & not worth the mention / clearly this isn’t all that there is / can’t take what we’re given but we’re so okay here / we’re doing fine, primal & naked / it’s just a skull, at least that’s what they call it / & we’re free to roam _   
—frank ocean, ‘white ferrari’

 

//

 

_ 1 _

 

you have never felt something in your chest sting like this before.

 

it takes a moment and you have to swallow down this new pain, hot and sudden like you’ve done a shot, and your eyes burn; you’re worried you’re going to cry for a moment.

 

you turn around and your friends ask if you’re okay. you definitely aren’t, but they tell you that you’re brave and they make you laugh. 

 

when you talk to adena later it feels like the breath has been knocked from your lungs.

 

‘you’re beautiful,’ you want to tell her, imagine telling her, over and over, when she stands next to you. you have said it aloud in your apartment, after you’d finished an entire bottle of rose and laid down in bed and closed your eyes and touched yourself. ‘you’re beautiful,’ you’d said to no one, you’d said to her, even though she wasn’t there and you are not that brave; tears had burned at your eyes but you had kept them pressed shut.

 

instead, you talk about her art and the knot in your chest is still there but her voice is warm and you don’t want to look away from her mouth. you stand and look at her photographs and your whole body aches; you have never wanted to touch anyone as much as you want to touch her. 

 

eventually you leave, because she is not yours to touch like that. she gives you a hug and kisses your cheek and lingers there, maybe, gently and you smell her perfume and try to remember the softness of her skin, her hand on your hip.

 

sutton is out with alex and jane is working so you go back to your apartment; you’re in heels and a jumpsuit and it’s humid outside, stubbornly warm, but you take the train anyway, sit with your hands clasped in front of you, fingers laced, like you might be ready to pray.

 

you pour yourself a glass of the good whiskey your parents got you; you take off your clothes and change into pajamas and go about your skincare routine mechanically. you put on a record and it’s not that late, not really, so you answer when your mom calls. it’s started to rain and she asks how your day was, just wanting to talk to you for a few minutes before she goes to bed, because you’re her daughter and she has always been overbearing and calm and incredible, so much gentleness to balance out all of the fire you sometimes feel.

 

you start to tell her about the gallery, stilted, because you start thinking about adena and suddenly a sob fights its way out.

 

‘kat?’ your mom’s voice is concerned on the other end of the line. ‘what’s wrong?’

 

you don’t know how to tell her that something has changed, that you don’t know how to name it, that your chest feels heavy and your hands sting and they have raised you to be brave but right now you don’t know how to be; that you are maybe falling in love with someone, with a woman, who has pretty eyes and thin wrists and you think of her mouth more than you would ever admit.

 

you take a deep breath. ‘just—stressed.’ your voice is shaky. ‘tired without an assistant.’

 

your mom makes a sympathetic noise but you know she doesn’t really believe you. she doesn’t push, though, and you take off your glasses and wipe under your eyes and your mom starts to tell you about your family dog’s latest trip to the park and she makes you laugh and it hurts less, maybe.

 

you say goodbye and will yourself not to cry again; you down whatever’s left in your glass. under your duvet, you slide your hand under your shirt, along your stomach, down into your underwear. you press your eyes shut and think of adena’s jaw.

 

‘you’re beautiful,’ you say again, like you should have, like you wish you had, and it feels like a punch. ‘you’re beautiful.’

 

you take your hand out of your underwear before you can come and turn onto your side. you fall asleep with an ache between your legs; an ache everywhere.

 

//

 

_ 2 _

 

for a split second you think you’ve broken your hand. they were stinging already, though, because you understand hatred and it builds in your body until your fist was hitting this awful man’s nose and there’s a small, satisfying crunch and you can smell the incoming rainstorm and adena’s perfume and it’s far too easy to hit him.

 

but then adena isn’t there anymore, and there’s a flash of fear because it’s your word against a white man’s, and a cop is pulling your arms behind you. you fight because you want to keep fighting but then you remember the news and the solemn way your father had spoken to you when you were younger. you take a deep breath in and it takes everything you have to calm down, to allow yourself to be put in the back of the cop car. you realize you’re shaking when they start to read you your rights; you are alone and scared and  _ angry _ and your body trembles with the force of it all.

 

they process you at the station and you’re exhausted and somewhere in your mind you think this might be a funny story one day and maybe you can find your mugshot to show to jane and sutton—but for right now they take your fingerprints and interview you and when you don’t have any real defense, not really, they say they’re going to hold you for the night.

 

it’s surreal, and ultimately very terrifying, to be in the cell they put you in; small and harsh. you curl up and close your eyes and tears leak out of them because this could be really, very bad and you don’t have your phone and you had wanted to kiss adena but now you’re here. something eats at your insides, because you’re exhausted and furious and scared, that maybe this is what was bound to happen, maybe people like  _ you _ can’t be happy.

 

your hand aches but for a few hours in the middle of the night, you try to sleep.

 

when you wake up in the morning it’s still early, just barely fading into day, and you wait a little longer before you sigh and feel another rush of anger and panic, even, because you have one phone call and quite literally the only number you know is scarlet’s main.

 

you’re mortified—really,  _ really _ mortified—when neither jane or sutton is there and jacqueline gets on the line.

 

‘kat?’

 

‘hey, jacqueline,’ you say, scuff your toe on the floor because your cheeks are burning. ‘i, um, well.’ you swallow and she waits. ‘i punched a guy last night because he—’ you take a breath because you’re furious again, so quickly. ‘i got arrested.’

 

there’s a small sigh on the other end of the line and then, ‘what precinct are you at?’

 

you tell her and she agrees, immediately, to come pick you up. she’s there within half an hour and they’re letting you out of your cell. you offer her a small smile and thank her and your voice is rough. she shakes her head, squeezes your shoulder once; you follow her out to the car that’s waiting.

 

/

 

you’re so angry because you know adena is right, sometimes you don’t have a choice, but you have never wanted to be scared like that.

 

you want to kiss her and she says, ‘i’m really very sorry,’ and leaves with tears in her eyes.

 

you clutch your phone in your bruised hand and you don’t go after her.

 

/

 

later, when you’re in bed together, she looks at your knuckles, the blue of your blood blooming across them, darker in the divots between your bones. she kisses your hand, says nothing.

 

you turn over and let her hold you and when you cry kisses the back of your neck, laces your fingers together in an odd kind of comfort, even though she knows it must hurt.

 

//

 

_ 3 _

 

adena goes to paris. she chooses someone else because you were a coward and she leaves. kissing her felt like something inside you—jaw to sternum to pelvis, everywhere you wanted her to touch you—had stung its way open, and she had made her way inside.

 

she still loves someone else and she goes to paris and it hurts everywhere.

 

//

 

_ 4 _

 

she says something in farsi and then she says, ‘you’re so beautiful,’ and you don’t have any words left, nothing to tell her how much she aches in you, so you kiss her instead.

 

you take each other’s clothes off and you don’t really know what you’re doing but you have dreamt of this for months and adena grazes her teeth along your neck and you scratch down the smooth skin of her back. 

 

she looks at you very carefully, asks, ‘is this okay?’ when she trails her hand toward your underwear.

 

‘yes,’ you say, and she touches you, and it’s all you’ve ever wanted.

 

you come fast and hard, silently, like the moment before glass shatters.

 

/

 

you remember the warmth of her body and she gets on the plane. it feels like the end of the world, but you cannot go with her; you  _ can’t _ , because you’re scared and you don’t understand and you love her.

 

your best friends sandwich you between them on their couch later, refill your glass with really shitty whiskey and feed you chicken nuggets one by one until you finally stop sniffling. 

 

‘we had sex.’

 

‘ _ what _ ?’ jane says, as sutton cheers, ‘i  _ told  _ you, jane.’

 

you laugh and sutton gives you a high five and jane says, ‘explain, please.’

 

you shrug. ‘we were in the first class lounge at like 2 am and no one else was there, so. you know. we had sex.’

 

‘wow,’ jane says, a little dreamily.

 

‘how was it?’ 

 

you don’t think you have the words to tell them what it felt like to learn the grooves of the tenderest part of this woman you think you might love; what adena clenching around your fingers and the tender press of her clit and the way she moaned into your neck felt like. 

 

‘good,’ you say.

 

‘what?’

 

‘just good?’

 

you swallow, tears stinging at your eyes again. ‘it was everything,’ you settle on, nod to yourself, feel her absence acutely. ‘it was everything.’

 

//

 

_ 5 _

 

you’re eating ceviche on the balcony of your hotel in cusco, feet propped up on the railing, in a t-shirt and underwear. adena is next to you, going on about how incredible the tuna is with this particular sauce; she’s so smart and passionate and she  _ cares _ about how rich the world is, how full, how much pleasure exists if you actually just pay attention.

 

‘hey,’ you say, serious, and she puts her fork down and turns toward you fully. you want to ask her how she can read the news, how she can walk through the world faced with all of the prejudice and hatred you know she experiences—and how she can still make such powerful, beautiful art. how she can still touch you with such joy, with such reverence. how she can wake you early just to see the sunrise.

 

‘kat?’

 

you take a deep breath. ‘do you want to be my girlfriend?’

 

she laughs, absolutely delighted, leans over to kiss you. ‘yes.’

 

you smile, relieved, kiss her again. you eventually stop when her stomach grumbles and later that night she falls asleep before you; you want to hold her tightly; you think of the sand you’d stood on earlier, on the edge of the sea, as the tide went out, how it shifted and sunk and disappeared beneath you before you even realized what was happening.

 

you want to hold her and you’re scared that she’ll disappear while you’re not paying attention, while you don’t understand something important you’re just starting to grasp.

 

you don’t know how to love something this special, don’t know how to hold onto something so vibrant and shimmering and brave without ruining it, without it slipping through your fingers—but you wrap your arm tighter around her and close your eyes.

 

//

 

_ 6 _

 

you kiss down her body and take her in like you have been hungry your entire life; maybe you have.

 

she tastes like heaven.

 

//

 

_ 7 _

 

‘i love you, kat.’

 

your heart is  _ racing _ and it feels big, bigger than anything you’ve ever felt, bigger than anything anyone else has ever said to you. there’s a chill that runs down your spine because maybe you’re not strong enough for this, all the ways you could get this wrong, all the ways it could crack you right down the middle.

 

you surprise yourself when you say, ‘i love you too.’

 

you hold her in your arms and when you’re leaving for work the next morning you say it again, just like that: ‘i love you,’ as you’re headed out the door, as easy as breathing.

 

it aches; you mean it.

 

//

 

_ 8 _

 

you touch yourself; you dream; you do shots and kiss another girl while your heart is pounding and your hands don’t hurt so much.

 

you tell adena and she leaves; she comes back.

 

‘what do we do now?’

 

she takes your hand. ‘i don’t know.’

 

you sit there like that for minutes, silent, and then you stand and tug her to you and when she leans in too, you kiss her.

 

‘i’m sorry,’ you say, whisper into her mouth, like you’re trying to breathe it into her body, so she’ll know, so she’ll truly understand. ‘i’m so sorry.’

 

she shakes her head and you let her lift the skirt of your dress and palm you over your underwear, arch your body into hers. she doesn’t kiss you anymore and you want her inside of you. 

 

she makes you come twice, sharp and quick, and you feel her crying, pressing her forehead into your shoulder. she takes her hand away from you and kisses your breastbone once, backs up to look into your eyes.

 

‘i’ll sleep on the couch tonight,’ she says.

 

‘adena.’

 

she shakes her head. ‘i just—i don’t want to leave again. i just need a breath.’

 

you swallow and nod and get up, kiss her forehead. ‘i’ll take the couch.’

 

‘you don’t—’

 

‘i’ll take the couch,’ you say again, firm, and she sighs, nods.

 

you get ready for bed in silence and lay down on your cushions eventually, curl up as small as you can. the want of your body has never felt so unmanageable, so confusing, so  _ lovely _ . you dream, that night, of wandering around inside a giant model of a tender rib cage, seeing the four-chambered, red pumping of the heart, the expansion of pink, perfect lungs. maybe it’s supposed to feel confined but it feels to dream-you like home. maybe you had read a poem about this, at one point in college— _ i have waited to be in this magical place and to tell you something beautiful _ —and in the dream the words float like music.

 

you wake up in the early morning and adena is still asleep, has thrown the duvet off like always, and you know the fullness of her hips and how her breasts fit in your hands and the way the skin of her inner thigh tastes.

 

you wonder about her ribcage, when she breathes, count the bones—try to know if you had been there, in a magical place, like she has taken up residence in yours; if you had ever really told her something so beautiful.

 

//

 

_ 9 _

 

you kiss girls like you’re hungry; you lean toward them and press your tongue inside their mouths and hold their jaws in your hands.

 

you want them all to be adena; their jaws are not sharp enough to slice through your palms but it feels the same anyway—you wish they were her.

 

//

 

_ 10 _

 

adena is crying and so are you, because you don’t know what she wants but you do know that you want forever with her. it’s too big and too heavy for the room you’re in, and you don’t know your favorite places in this city to run off to, the best bar to do rounds of tequila shots at, your favorite coffee shop in the middle of crown heights that has oat milk and scones to die for. you don’t know which train to go on that runs over the manhattan bridge at twilight, or which little enclave of the lake at prospect park you like to set out a blanket in and lie down and just  _ breathe _ .

 

adena is crying and you are in love and tears press at your eyes too, because you are trying so hard to hold onto something you don’t understand, that maybe you aren’t yet big enough for, maybe you will never be good enough to have. you love her and you  _ want _ her but you have never been good at wanting gentle things; you read a story, once, about women who disappeared, faded. they were all loved, and some of them even deeply, another beautiful girl fucking them deeply and tenderly in the middle of the afternoon and hiking with them and praying in the mountains over saintly votives and eating oranges like they were the most precious, first fruit of sin, of heaven. the girls disappeared anyway, became shimmery ghosts, and the stupid story jane made you read sticks in your head when you hear adena’s words.

 

you have so many things you want to say, because you’re angry and you’re  _ hurt _ and you think maybe you’re both those disappearing, brilliant women for a moment, held down by each other, worshipped and reverent and all sorts of holy.

 

you have nothing to apologize for and neither does she; your chest is heaving and you’re in the city of light and you want nothing more than to taste her one last time; you wonder, distantly, if this hunger—for bodies, for softness, for love—that she’s awakened in you will ever be sated.

 

your tears run hot and free down your cheeks and you wish you knew how to want; you don’t, not like this. you are open, you have  _ opened _ yourself up, cracked yourself wide open, and there is no way now that you could sew yourself back together.

 

everything stings; adena is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, solid and dark and whole.

 

//

 

_ +1 _

 

it’s summer, blistering hot and humid in august and you’ve had four shots of tequila at some dive bar in brooklyn that sutton had brought you to because she’d promised $9 tequila/tecate combos and you were devastated a few months ago and the ache hasn’t really lessened but it’s rarer, now, less pressing.

 

you’ve slept with people and kissed people and even held a very pretty girl’s hand but your spotify plays the song you and adena had danced to in your loft every now and then when you’re in the blessed air conditioning of the A train and—you miss her.

 

you’ll always miss her, you think, or you’re about to say to sutton, and you’re on the big patio and there are beautiful people all around you so it’s surprising and jolting and entirely beautiful when you hear, ‘kat?’

 

it’s the accent that does you in, warm and heavy like the air all around you; you’re sweating and you’re in a tanktop that you’ve worn for far too long for the heatwave and your edges are probably a disaster and it seems like a dream, but then there’s adena, in a loose hijab and simple jeans and you haven’t fallen out of love with her for a second.

 

you know she’d been in paris, because you still talk, but— ‘i didn’t know you were back in the city,’ you say, and adena smiles, sits next to you.

 

‘hello to you too.’

 

you roll your eyes because otherwise you might cry. ‘hello to you too, adena.’

 

she grins. ‘i came back yesterday, was about to email you in the morning.’

 

you nod and you have to swallow back certain and very pressing tears because you’re a little drunk but she’s so fucking beautiful and you never fell in love with someone until you fell in love with her.

 

‘welcome back, then.’

 

her smile turns gentler then. ‘i have a few pieces at the new museum,’ she says, ‘for the summer.’

 

it fills something in your chest—sadness, because you had been apart and she had made something incredible, clearly; but also joy, because she’s so incredibly talented and she deserves for everyone to see the things she’s able to create. ‘that’s amazing, adena.’

 

she nods, looks down, looks away from your very sincere gaze, and all the air makes its way from your lungs. you’re about to do something, like lean forward and kiss her, but then sutton plops down next to you and you glare and she looks to your other side and says, ‘oh,  _ shit _ ,’ and then recovers briefly when adena looks up with a laugh and says, ‘i mean, hey, adena.’

 

‘hello, sutton,’ adena says, and even her eyes crinkle with happiness.

 

sutton goes to get up again but adena shakes her head and puts her hand on your knee gently. ‘i’m about to head out, but let’s get coffee soon,’ she suggests. ‘if you want.’

 

‘yeah,’ you say. ‘definitely. yes.’

 

she nods and when she kisses your cheek you remember the first time she’d broken your heart; the pain is familiar and beautiful and you welcome it; you have learned that you could never regret it at all.

 

you watch her walk off.

 

‘wow, okay,’ sutton says, pats your knee. ‘let’s process this?’

 

you nod, take the offered shot from her hand. ‘can we get more tacos, though?’ you ask, gesture toward the food truck. ‘because we’re gonna be here for a while.’

 

she laughs and kisses your cheek and gets in line.

 

/

 

you wake to her photographing you in the soft morning light.

 

it’s been a few months; she has an apartment in bushwick and you spend nights there sometimes. things are more intimate than you remember, more honest. you’re only sleeping with each other at this point and you haven’t really discussed it explicitly but you know.

 

you yawn and she smiles and the same song you’d danced to for the first time in your kitchen is drifting from the speakers by her window.

 

she’s so beautiful, in your t-shirt and underwear and you feel a little crease in your brows and you remember the first time she’d ever really  _ looked _ at you, the first time you’d ever really felt  _ seen _ : she had looked like she was going to cry and it had been so special you hadn’t had a single thing to say.

 

maybe you’re looking at her like that now, because she takes a photograph on an old 35mm camera and then sets it down, climbs into bed and kisses the crease between your brows, settles down into your sleep-warm skin.

 

‘i am glad,’ she says, ‘we found our way back here.’

 

you swallow. ‘you’re beautiful,’ you say, because you have waited for what feels like centuries to say it; maybe you are saying it for all the women who never got to. ‘you’re so beautiful.’

 

adena rubs her thumb along your cheek and then kisses you, gently, deeply. you hold her hip beneath your palm, move until you feel the warm ridges of her ribcage, unbroken and solid and sure, housing some sort of beating promise.

 

she smiles into your mouth and you are very, very much in love. it aches but it’s different now, because you will grow together, scrounge together a wild downpayment on a brownstone in park slope, think about children, adopt a dog. you will run around in the first snow of the year like you’re young, catching the flakes on your tongue; you will get caught in a summer thunderstorm, a downpour so heavy it ruins your umbrella and adena will try to cover your hair with her jacket and you will laugh all the way to your apartment, soaked and happy.

 

you kiss her now like you will kiss her forever; your chest spreads open and it is warm, an unspeakable thing—a memory, like you have known yourself all over again—when you let her inside. you have waited your whole life, you think, to be this magnificent; to be this whole.

**Author's Note:**

> theres a taco truck on the patio always so i am 100% correct
> 
> also im @ possibilistfanfiction on tumblr if u want to come say hi/ cRY ABT FRANK OCEAN STILL! :'( is he ok


End file.
